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The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) will hold a hearing in San Antonio on Thursday to solicit comments from the public on draft rules governing a new state water infrastructure fund, authorized by voter approval of Proposition 6 last November.

The rules are a big deal. They'll help decide how billions of dollars are spent, or misspent, in the coming decades to help Texas meet its growing demand for water. If we get them right, they can help guide state and regional water officials to craft a more balanced water future that sustainably meets communities' water needs while taking care to protect our natural resources, including our rivers, bays and aquifers, and the wildlife, recreationalists and businesses which depend on them.

The good news is that the draft rules are pretty good. TWDB staff has done a good job in developing a process for prioritizing which projects in the State Water Plan get funded and have made clear that investments in conservation will be a big priority. The staff emphasized that the 20 percent minimum set aside for conservation would be a “floor and not a ceiling” and that they will conduct an aggressive marketing and outreach program to encourage applications for funding to help conserve water and cut waste.

Wasteful water use occurs across Texas and throughout the economy.Agricultural, municipal and industrial water consumers too often withdraw more water from rivers and aquifers than is necessary to irrigate crops, maintain landscaping, and produce electricity. At least 500 billion gallons of water are wasted each year, enough to meet the municipal water needs of 9 million Texans.

The new funding can be used to help farms upgrade to more efficient irrigation equipment, cities repair leaks to municipal water mains, and to businesses and homes to install more efficient appliances and landscaping.

The rules are a good start toward smarter water management, but more needs to be done to make sure that as Texas grows, we leave enough water to protect the health of the rivers, bays and aquifers that make living in Texas great.

Texas law requires that the state water plan shall “protect the agricultural and natural resources of the entire state.” But some projects in the plan don't meet that standard.

For example, San Antonio Water System has proposed piping in water from aquifers around Bastrop County. The project will likely impact aquifer levels in the groundwater management area, including the Lost Pines district, where current permits already authorize the withdrawal of twice as much groundwater that is available to sustainably maintain the aquifer. If applications for new permits are granted, total water withdrawals could exceed five times the amount of water that the aquifer can sustainably provide. The City of Austin Watershed Protection Department has warned that “excess withdrawals from the Carrizo-Wilcox and Simsboro aquifers would have severe negative impacts to local wells and creeks in eastern Texas counties.”

Another project in northeast Texas, the proposed Marvin Nichols reservoir, would flood 70,000 acres of priceless farms, rare forestland and pristine marsh, which supports beavers, river otters, and dozens of migratory birds. This despite the fact that simply reducing water use in the Dallas-Fort Worth region by 2060 to the same levels as are currently in place in Austin and San Antonio today, would avoid the need for the project. D Magazine wrote that the area “is a place of sublime beauty, where blue buntings that might have been painted by Rousseau dart through the dense forest-jungles.” In a recent public comment period, 99.5 percent of commenters called on TWDB to remove the project from the State Water Plan.

And water withdrawals from the Guadalupe River contributed to the deaths of 23 birds in the world's only remaining flock of migrating whooping cranes. Despite flows that are already inadequate, the 2012 water plan includes proposals for more diversions from the river.

We have to be smarter about how we use water and that includes maximizing the investment in conservation and avoiding projects with significant harm to our environment. The state also needs to support innovative projects that help meet water demands while helping our environment, such as new water supplies which set aside a portion of water to protect flows in our rivers and to our bays.

As TWDB develops the rules and priorities for use of the new water funds, it's critical that they pursue a balanced solution that improves the efficiency of water use and leaves more water in our rivers and aquifers to support the ecosystems that depend on water.

Thursday's hearing will be at Texas A&M University San Antonio , One University Way at 1:00 p.m.